We have to stand up to litter louts. Fines won’t stop them | Alice Arnold | Opinion | The Guardian

We have to stand up to litter louts. Fines won’t stop them | Alice Arnold | Opinion | The Guardian: "It’s over three years ago that I threw a plastic bottle back through the car window whence it came. I thought little of it at the time until I tweeted about it and a small media storm erupted. Apparently, it was not normal to stand up to litter louts. Which is not to say that the issue is not important to people. It is clearly something many of us feel very strongly about. We just don’t take any action.

Now I hear that the Department for Communities and Local Government is planning to increase fines for dropping litter. The minimum fine is set to double to £100, with communities minister Marcus Jones claiming that those who drop litter would be “hit in the pocket”."



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China's Message to Its Professors: Get Back to the Classroom - Bloomberg Business

China's Message to Its Professors: Get Back to the Classroom - Bloomberg Business: "Hundreds of senior academics are quitting lucrative seats on the boards of Chinese companies, as a clampdown on top government officials holding paid corporate positions spreads into the education sector.
Until recently, university professors at state universities had thought themselves exempt from a 2013 ban on high-level government officials and Communist Party members holding corporate jobs, a restriction installed as part of the nation’s anti-corruption drive. That changed in November, when the education ministry threatened disciplinary action against higher-ranked academics who fail to register their corporate assignments."



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Business jargon dictionary: Guffpedia

Business jargon dictionary: Guffpedia: "Lucy Kellaway’s dictionary of business jargon and corporate nonsense"



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The lonely thoughts of a long distance runner

http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/what-we-think-about-when-we-run

After three decades of distance running I have realized that I run, mostly in pain, just to experience the handful of occasions when the body seems to be powered by jet engines and does not feel any resistance and the running feels effortless. It is pure bliss, and on those occasions the mind can be free of thoughts. Most of my distance runs involve feelings of pain. I don't run with headphones or mobile devices. At the beginning of my run I usually play music inside my head (songs like Morning has Broken or These are days you remember, music I grew up with). I let my imagination run with me and do role play- during today's run I imagined that I was the captain of an All Blacks team that had just lost a game, and I had to address my teammates. As a distance runner I use my imagination to power me through my pain. Distance running also provides many interactive experiences for a runner- I remember one particular training run where a female runner just blew past me. Being a good runner, my ego hurt far more than my body and I ran as hard as I could to catch her, but I could only see her face before I collapsed and fell down while she continued running. A few days later I saw her face on the cover of a sports magazine- she was in the U.S. Olympic Marathon team.

I liked Ms. Schulz's coverage of the topic, from fiction to non fiction, from Alan Sillitoe to Gardner. It should be added that Tom Courtenay and Michael Redgrave brought "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" to life on the silver screen.

Why do we run?

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2015/jun/18/five-novels-every-runner-should-read

Why do we run? In his book on the subject, Mark Rowlands complains that most books about running reframe this question in terms of what use it has. We run because it keeps us healthy, reduces stress or brings us joy. We run for the satisfaction of a personal best or for the thrill of the race. We run to meet new people, to be part of a team or to impress the opposite sex. All of us will at some point have explained our pastime in such terms. But Rowlands argues that running, at its best, is valuable for what it is in itself, not for what it gives us. In other words, we run just because. And this is an idea that comes naturally to the novelist.

When the reform-school boy in Alan Sillitoe’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner throws away a race against a rival school, he does so not only to deny glory to the institution he detests, but because to win – even to finish – would be to undermine what he’s come to learn is the true value of running. “You had to run, run, run, without knowing why you were running,” he says. “This feeling was the only honesty and realness there was in the world.” For once, he’s doing something that is not done for the sake of something or someone else.

The following five novels are recommended as portraits of a runner’s life, as well as for being forceful reminders that running, at its best, is something we do for its own sake.

The housing pain continues

U.S. ‘Underwater’ Homeowners Increase to 28.6%, Zillow Reports - Businessweek: "The number of U.S. homeowners who owe more than their properties are worth climbed in the third quarter as lenders repossessed fewer houses, Zillow Inc. said.

The share of borrowers with negative equity rose to 28.6 percent, up from 26.8 percent in the second quarter and 23.2 percent a year earlier, the real estate data provider said today. Last quarter’s portion was the biggest since Seattle- based Zillow began tracking the measure in the first quarter of 2009, when 22.3 percent of households were underwater.

The number increased because fewer delinquent properties are being taken over by banks, said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist. Banks have slowed the pace of seizures as they negotiate with state attorneys general probing the mishandling of foreclosure documents.

“We still have very high negative equity rates,” Humphries said in an e-mail. “That’s putting extreme pressure on households because temporary job losses translate into foreclosures at much higher rates when the household is in negative equity.”"

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Drill baby Drill, Obama way

Obama to expand drilling off Alaska, in Gulf - Yahoo! Finance: "The Obama administration cautiously offered up more areas in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska's coast to oil and gas drilling Tuesday, but didn't go far enough to satisfy Republicans pushing to greatly expand drilling as a way to create jobs and wean the country off foreign oil.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar unveiled a proposal to hold 15 lease sales for areas in the Gulf of Mexico, including two in the eastern Gulf, and three off Alaska's coast in the time frame from 2012 to 2017. The sales off Alaska, where native groups and environmentalists have objected to drilling, would be the first since 2008. They would be held late in the five-year time frame to allow for scientific evaluations in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, which Interior officials called a "frontier" for drilling. And they would be targeted to avoid areas with cultural and environmental sensitivities, officials said.

"The approach we are taking there is a cautious one," Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said of the Arctic leases. "We are aware of the substantial issues associated with major production.""

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